Monday, September 23, 2013

Mon Sep 23rd Todays News

Todays postings are focused on the world issue where radical Islam has dominated Islamic cultural expression. So it is an expectation of Islam that rape, including children, murder, including children and even cannibalism is seen as cultural. There is no degradation that isn't justified by holy war. Even where war isn't present. So that the greatest threat to Islamic peoples seems to be from Islamic peoples. And no one dare help Islamic peoples, for fear of wrath of their Islamic enemies. Some, people like Obama, feed the crocodile, hoping it will eat them last. But there is hope. Hope that not all Islam peoples are filthy, nasty, corrupt animals capable of no compassion. I get it that there are terrible consequences for decent good Islamic peoples from speaking out. There is no tradition of greatness, like that of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, Golda Meier, Pope Francis or the Dalai Lama calling for peace. An Australian architect who is practical left wing, believes in renewable architecture, has an eight month pregnant wife, and a vision for future prosperity in poor Africa. And both he and his wife are killed by terrorists, one of whom asked a person claiming to be Muslim who Mohammed's mother was and answering wrong. For the record, the correct answer is probably the sister of Mohammed's father, or Satan. Also killed is renowned poet Kofi Awoonor. And a Nephew and fiancé of the Kenyan PM. But they did not die alone. In Pakistan, a Christian church was bombed, killing some seventy out of 400 parishioners. They had just finished a service and were having a communal lunch. But they were not alone either. In Israel, on separate occasions, a soldier was killed. The soldiers were not doing anything wrong. One was lured to their death by a madman who wanted to negotiate the release of their terrorist brother, a door opened by Obama. The other killed by a sniper. I include today an article of a woman who made the mistake of marrying an Islamic man. Another issue is Global Warming belief. There needs to be a royal commission investigation into how Australia has sacrificed so may billions of dollars for no purpose. Because, as we look at how the money was spent, and who prospered, we see the same people who excused terrorism, endorsed Global Warming extremism.
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I’ve recorded some comments on David Suzuki for Channel 10’s The Project, which will interview the alarmist tonight.
I’ll be interested in what, if any, will be run.
I did mention, for instance, the massive size of his ecological footprint:

Quadra Island is home to 2,550 people. It is 410 square kilometers in
size… Not bad if you are looking for some peace and quiet from the
raging chaos that is Kitsilano, a neighbourhood in Vancouver:

David Suzuki: I love Kitsilano and Vancouver, but there are too many
people and too many cars. I think we can have greater density if we
made the city much more hostile to cars. The cars have made our city
unattractive, and thus I like to spend more of my time in a smaller
place at Quanta [ed, Quadra] Island where we also have a home…

So David Suzuki buys a bit of land on Quadra Island. And what a bit it is!

When we purchased Tangwyn, the agent took great pains to inform us
it could be subdivided into three pieces. “You could sell two and pay
for all of it,” he said, as if that were an incentive and option. It
wasn’t. We are privileged to claim to own what was once First Nations
land and would like to see it become a part of a larger entity, the
forest ...

Or hear it from green priest David Suzuki, who last year told a
Ballarat audience of wildly applauding town planners it was “disgusting”
that we live in bigger houses than did our grandparents.
“What kind of world is this that regards this as progress?” he shouted.

...Half the coral on the Great Barrier Reef has disappeared in the
past 27 years and its size could halve again in the next decade with
degradation of the environment and the increasing frequency of cyclones.

Frequency of cyclones? Australian Bureau of Meteorology:

TRENDs in tropical cyclone activity in the Australian region ...
show that the total number of cyclones has decreased in recent decades
... Two (recent studies) suggest that there will be no significant
change in tropical cyclone numbers ... The third study, based on the
CSIRO simulations, shows a significant decrease in tropical cyclone
numbers for the Australian region ...

A leaked draft of the report to be released on Friday by the IPCC, the
UN body given a Nobel Prize for its climate alarmism, now admits
temperatures have, in fact, all but stopped rising.
Said The Age: “Warming has slowed in the past 15 years to 0.05C a decade
- below the long-term average of 0.12C since 1951.” (Other measurements
show even less warming.) That trivial rise, less than what 114 of 117
leading climate models predicted, suggests our rising carbon dioxide
emissions may not have much influence on climate, after all.

In short, I pointed out that in my opinion Suzuki was an alarmist and a
hypocrite who got his facts wrong. Let’s see if he’s tonight given the
reception on The Project that he so richly deserves. Or will he be treated as a guru?

Since Rudd regained the Labor leadership from Julia Gillard, most
individual polls have shown no statistically significant shift in party
support but for the initial six-point leap in the government’s vote…
It’s a lot harder to tip a winner when the polls average out close to a
50-50 contest on preferences, but we are still seeing and hearing a lot
of nonsense about shifts in support, Rudd’s honeymoon ending and another
hung parliament…
Now, with Rudd installed, particular state factors and the history of
close contests in Australia suggest 50-50 polls are not cause for
opposition optimism…
Abbott’s ... consistently low approval rating in the mid-30s is another worry.

Some ALP diehards think Labor saved enough seats to be within range next
time, especially as the new Prime Minister’s approval rating is
unusually low. This misses the main point of this election: voters saw
the ALP government, not Tony Abbott, as ‘’unelectable’’ - and Labor made
it that way. No party that on the eve of an election dumps the prime
minister endorsed by voters at the last election, and does so not once
but twice, can sustain an appearance of stability, unity and strong
leadership…
Labor, with its record low of 33.4 per cent, bore the brunt of voters’
disgust… No policy vision will persuade voters until Labor overcomes the
memories of its dysfunction.

The ABC’s fawning over eco-extremist David
Suzuki continues. Listen, if you have a strong stomach, to the ABC’s
Philip Clark, a former Labor staffer filling in as host of Radio
National’s Breakfast, in rapturous communion with the “great environmentalist” over global warming.
Note the complete absence of any fact-checking of Suzuki or the
slightest scepticism of his doom-mongering. Naturally, the failure of
the planet to warm over the past 15 years is not mentioned, either.
Suzuki just goes on his standard far-Left rant:

We continue our profligate ways… We’ll trash the planet… “What is going
on now is criminal ... The tragedy now is that we really are being
dictated to now by a corporate agenda… [The rich] invested hundreds of
millions of dollars to say this is junk science…

Clark’s toughest question:

What does it take now, David?

I’ve had reason to wonder about Clark’s bias before.
Still not enough fact-free Suzuki for you? Then tune in tonight for the ABC’s Q&A , which has granted Suzuki the unusual honor of making him the sole guest.
The ABC is a joke.
UPDATE
Reader Andrew of Randwick:

Also Julia Baird (ABC Local Radio 702 - Sydney) just gave Mr Suzuki 30 minutes of free time, in the prime spot 8.30-9.00am.
What other visiting ‘academic’ or ‘activist’ has ever been given so much free time? And I mean ever.

The Green Party is among the big losers, with early projections showing
them picking up only 8% of the vote. In 2009 they received almost 11%.
With climate change losing importance in Germany as an issue and the
Energiewende (transition to renewable energy) turning into a chaos that
threatens the country’s economic stability, the Greens, who were polling
near 16% earlier in the year, have since lost almost half of their
voter base.

CHRISTINE Milne has promised a review of the Greens’ poor primary vote
at the federal election, conceding she has largely failed to broaden the
party’s base and that the deal to support Gillard Labor alienated many
voters…
Nationally, the Greens’ House of Representatives primary vote slipped
from 11.7 per cent at the 2010 election to about 8.5 per cent—its lowest
since 2007. Its first-preference Senate vote also crashed, from 13 per
cent in 2010 to 8.5 per cent—its lowest in almost a decade.

(Thanks to reader Aard Knox.)
UPDATE
Reader Baden takes another lesson from the German election:

One woman who doesn’t use accusations of misogyny and sexism to cover up
her own failures, who has judgement, who doesn’t lie, who gets on with
the job and, as a result, has the support of her people and wins an
election in a landslide: Angela Merkel wins third term in German elections
Now,that’s a leader. Emily’s Listers, take note.

Germans look set to punish the Green Party for urging
that public cafeterias go meat-free on a designated “Veggie Day” each
week in order to help the environment and reduce cruelty to animals.
Borrowing colorfully from English, German newspaper Bild described
public reaction to the idea as a “shitstorm.”
At her party’s final campaign rally on Saturday, Merkel joined in, slamming the Green proposal.
“You will never hear from the Christian Democratic Union party when you
should eat meat and when you shouldn’t,” Merkel said to loud applause
from her supporters and campaign workers in the Tempodrom theater.
“...we are a party confident people can manage their own lives...”

The Coalition will also begin unwinding key
“nanny state’’ agencies such as the Australian National Preventative
Health Agency, established to lead the national fight against obesity,
alcohol abuse and tobacco use.
Health Minister Peter Dutton has been critical of ANPHA’s decision to
spend $500,000 on a study into a potential “fat tax” despite neither
side of politics supporting such a move…

I decided some 15 years ago to never enter a journalism competition judged by my peers.
Part of this was self-defence: I would never put my reputation in the
hands of journalists who lean collectively to the Left. Part of it was
principle: I would not allow myself to be distracted from my real
audience - not my fellow journalists who might reward me with prizes,
but my readers, without whom I’m just wasting my time.
If I’d wanted to curry favor with fellow journalists I would would never
have dared to expose the “stolen generations” myth or question the
great global warming scare. I would never have fact-checked warming
alarmists on The Age or criticised the outrageous and illegitimate bias of the ABC.
I hope my ban on journalist-judged awards will now be taken up by News
Corp editors, who have been reminded very sharply that panels of
journalists are more likely to reward a closed-minded, dying newspaper
of the Left than a vibrant, popular one of the “Right”:

THE presentation of the PANPA Newspaper of the Year Award to Fairfax Media’s newspaper The Age has led to a backlash from publishing executives and editors amid accusations of bias against the awards’ organisers…
The Age beat several prominent newspaper titles to win the award,
including The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The West Australian, The
Sydney Morning Herald, The New Zealand Herald, the Manly Daily and mX…
The judges said The Age had “thrived” in the tough climate…
The Age’s win cemented in many editors’ and executives’ minds the bias
they saw going back at least a decade… The Age won the award in 2011
while its stablemate the SMH won the award in 2009 and 2010. And The
Sunday Age won the Sunday newspaper category in 2010 and last year. The
Australian won the overall 90,000-plus category last year.
Alongside the perceived bias towards Fairfax is the view that judges
from overseas organisations such as The Guardian and The Independent
have unduly influenced the awards and favoured “progressive-style”
newspapers with no emphasis on news-breaking and analysis. PANPA has
become, in the words of one editor, a “glee club for Fairfax” that saw
The Age recognised despite the commercial dominance in its market of its
News Corp-owned rival, the Herald Sun.
The most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, released
last month, show a very sharp drop in circulation for The Age, down 16.2
per cent from 169,582 to 142,050 for the April-June period compared
with the same period the year before.

And what a laughable definition of “transparency”:

The Newspaper Works, the body that organises the PANPA awards, has
refused to name the three-person judging panel. Despite this, chief
executive officer Mark Hollands has rejected the claims of bias and said
“there is no lack of transparency”.
“The organisation has always been totally up front with the way these awards have been conducted,” he said.

TIM Flannery has been sacked. But why haven’t journalists who promoted such scaremongers been sacked, too?
When will they pay the price for the most shameful collective failure of journalism in decades?
Flannery’s astonishing record of dud predictions, such as his 2007
warning that we’d never again get dam-filling rains, finally caught up
with the Chief Climate Commissioner this week.
The Abbott Government sacked him on just its second day, ostensibly to
cut costs, and few journalists are defending the global warming alarmist
they once hailed as our 2007 Australian of the Year. Damaged goods.
But it’s too easy to merely give Flannery the flick now his warming
faith is finally crumbling. It’s too easy to make him the sole scapegoat
after 15 years of no significant rise in global temperature - a hiatus
to which the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
will on Friday reluctantly admit in its latest report.
More important is to demand accountability from the countless
journalists who made heroes of his sort and terrified the public with
preposterous scares about a warming that hasn’t come.

The tales of horror included a masked gunman who thrust his assault
rifle into a shopper’s face and demanded to know his religion. The
shopper said he was a Muslim, so the gunman asked him to name the
prophet Mohammed’s mother. When he failed to do so, the gunman raised
his rifle and shot him in the head, according to witnesses spared death
because of their Islamic beliefs.
Three Britons, two French women, a Chinese woman and two Canadians,
including a diplomat, were killed. The renowned Ghanaian poet and
statesman Kofi Awoonor was also among the dead.

Three Muslim extremists convicted of conspiring to plan an Australian
terrorist attack have been sentenced to each serve 18 years’ jail.
The men were part of an Islamic terrorist cell who were planning to attack the Holsworthy army barracks in Sydney’s south-west.
Their aim was to enter the barracks armed with military weapons and
shoot 500 personnel, or as many people as possible, before they were
killed or ran out of ammunition.
Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, Saney Edow Aweys and Nayef El Sayed ... were
connected to the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabaab, and tried to
obtain a fatwa, or religious decree, justifying the attack.

Al Shabab has also attracted the largest number of Western passport
holders of any al Qaeda grouping. It is, therefore, the most ideally
positioned to pursue attacks against the West.
Australians rank among those who have joined al Shabab, trained with
them, supported them and most significantly, sought to carry out an
attack within Australia under the group’s name. In the Australian
context then, the merger of these two groups does not show a weakening,
but rather intensifies the threat. And Australia, along with other
countries home to an al Shabab support base, faces an increased
likelihood of being targeted.

Abdisalam Ali - an al-Shabaab suicide bomber - published a martyrdom
video prior to killing himself on 29 October 2011 in Mogadishu stating
“my brothers and sisters, do Jihad in America, do Jihad in Canada, do
Jihad in England [and] anywhere in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in China,
in Australia - anywhere you find kuffar [infidels]. Fight them and be
firm against them”.

I fear our immigration program has been run by idealists so afraid of seeming racist that they have left us dangerously exposed.
UPDATE
Read the warning:

Al-Shabaab is claiming that there are American gunmen among those still holed up in the Westgate mall in a standoff with Kenyan and Israeli special forces.
The Somali al-Qaeda affiliate tweeted a series of names on its latest
account before Twitter against suspended the group.... They proceeded to
tweet the names one by one, including Ahmed Mohamed Isse, 22, “native”
of St. Paul, Minn., Abdifatah Osman Keenadiid, 24, of Minneapolis, and
Gen Mustafe Noorudiin, 27, of Kansas City, Mo.

Al-Shabaab recently released a PR video targeted at Somali-Americans in
Minnesota, trying to lure them to jihad as more than two dozen have
already done so through the state’s “terror pipeline.” Three Americans —
Abdisalan Hussein Ali, Farah Mohamed Beledi and Shirwa Ahmed — from
Minnesota have been suicide bombers for Al-Shabaab in a series of
attacks in Mogadishu over the past few years.
Other gunmen were named as being from locations such as Finland, Canada,
the UK., Somalia and Kenya. None of the names were female, even though
witnesses reported a white woman among the shooters.
That’s raised speculation about whether “White Widow” Samantha
Lewthwaite, a British widow of one of the 7/7 attackers who became an
al-Qaeda paymaster, is involved in the attacks. Last year she was on the
run in Kenya as international authorities tried to hunt her down.

TWO men have been charged with terrorism and firearms offences after
being stopped in Dover, British police say. Mohommod Hassin Nawaz, 29,
and Hamza Nawaz, 22, of Stratford, east London, are accused of attending
a terrorist training camp in Syria.

Six more people were killed in clashes Saturday in the southern
Philippines where government forces are fighting Muslim rebels besieging
a port city… More than 10,000 houses were destroyed in fires blamed on
MNLF fighters seeking to block the advance of government forces.

The board of NBN Co has offered to resign en masse, falling on their sword amid suggestions they do not have the confidence of the incoming government…
Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski is waiting in the wings to be appointed executive chairman…
[Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull] has blamed the board and
executive team for the massive cost blowouts, timetable delays and for
contractors losing money.

Australian politics for
years has had the two main centrist parties, with the Greens tugging
them to the Left. The new Parliament will have a new bloc of votes in
the Senate that restores the balance and will demand Tony Abbott take
more conservative, rational positions:

AN “informal” voting bloc of conservative senators may be in place next July,
with Family First’s likely senator-elect saying the new batch of micro-
and minor-party politicians share the same views on a lot of policies.
Family First chairman Bob Day, ranked fifth of six South Australian
Senate candidates with less than 10 per cent of the vote left to count,
... said yesterday he was impressed by other likely senators from the
Australian Sports Party, the Motoring Enthusiast Party, Palmer United
Party and the Liberal Democratic Party.
If elected, he said, they would probably vote the same way and support
most Coalition policies. “....[These] all seem like sensible, everyday
kind of Australians who are conservative.”
Mr Day - a “good friend” of Mr Abbott - said the Coalition should expect
strong opposition to the PPL, which he described as “not a conservative
thing at all”. He wants all mothers, including those who have quit the
workforce, treated equally…
Mr Day said all emissions reduction schemes should be scrapped as well…
He said he had never believed in man-made climate change.
“I do not support anything whatsoever regarding any attempt to try to
reduce CO2 emissions,” he said. “The Direct Action plans and renewable
energy targets are just a massive rent-seeking exercise.”

The first boat arrives under the Abbott Government, but no change is yet detectable in how it’s dealt with:

THE first asylum boat to arrive since Tony
Abbott was sworn in as Prime Minister—and a media blackout on new
arrivals was imposed—was escorted into Christmas Island yesterday.
It is believed there were about 30 people on the boat, which arrived at 11.30am, local time… Those onboard appeared to be Middle Eastern.

Josh Frydenberg, the parliamentary secretary with responsibility for the Abbott government’s deregulation agenda, has admirable intentions:

In little more than 5 1/2 years, Labor was responsible for introducing
more than 21,000 additional regulations… And the Business Council of
Australia has highlighted one resource development approval process that
took years, was extremely costly and required a 12,000-page report,
after which approval was finally granted with 1500 commonwealth and
state conditions and 8000 subconditions attached…
A paradigm shift will soon be under way… Two parliamentary sitting days
will be set aside for repealing legislation each year… And the
performance of senior members of the public service will be assessed in
part according to their proven record in reducing regulation, with their
remuneration calculated accordingly.
The Productivity Commission will also be tasked to determine a framework for auditing the performance of regulatory agencies.

The Prime Minister has ... pulled the pin on
a key Kevin Rudd initiative - Community Cabinet - as he instructs his
new ministry team to put the broom through the bureaucracy…
The Major Cities Unit - which provided advice on developing Australia’s
18 biggest cities - and the Social Inclusion Unit in Mr Abbott’s own
Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet will be dismantled.
The Coalition will also begin unwinding key “nanny state’’ agencies such
as the Australian National Preventative Health Agency, established to
lead the national fight against obesity, alcohol abuse and tobacco use.
Health Minister Peter Dutton has been critical of ANPHA’s decision to
spend $500,000 on a study into a potential “fat tax” despite neither
side of politics supporting such a move…

The future is also uncertain for key agencies such as the Human Rights
Commission. Some senior Coalition figures are keen to scrap the
Commission altogether - but that would provoke a serious political brawl
that Mr Abbott is not keen to have.
Attorney-General George Brandis has signalled his intention to challenge what he sees as a Left-controlled human rights agenda…
The future of the national Children’s Commissioner - announced by former PM Julia Gillard in February - is also in doubt…
Around $100 million will be cut from Australian Research Council grants
with the Government determined to wipe out costly academic indulgences,
such as a $443,000 study into the “God of Hegel’s Post-Kantian
idealism’’…
Climate Change Minister Greg Hunt has already taken the knife to key agencies, including the Climate Commission…
Other key Rudd reforms - including the expensive bid for a seat on the
United Nations Security Council - are being wound back with a planned
new Australian embassy in Senegal to be abandoned.

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Bali .1dvd=1euro
===Carlo Di CintioThe wall...
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Bali
===After some initial digs, a Dutch filmmaker believes he may have found the site of buried Nazi treasure long rumored to exist. He was led to the Bavarian town of Mittenwald after cracking a code believed to be hidden in a music score.Technically, it wasn't Nazi .. it was merely seized by them. - ed
===The arteries of Diablo

This one is for my friend Patrick Wong who got me out of the house for a moment tonight. When I left my home I saw the mostly full moon in the sky and thought to hit this location up.

While shooting, I was thinking how the pulse of the communities are fed by these red and white cells... keeping the area alive... like blood cells.

Recall that only Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard and cried t'was bare. Today millions see a $4 trillion bloated cupboard overflowing with political goodies to cut.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/22/rep-nancy-pelosi-nothing-left-cut-budget-cupboard-/
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4 her
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===Allen WestPresident Obama whispered under his breath in a hot mike moment to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin he would have more flexibility in a second term. We now clearly see what that flexibility means: increased aggression by enemies of our State who see a weak, indecisive President. The Islamic terrorist attack this weekend in Kenya reminds us of the last weak American President, Bill Clinton, who presided over an Islamic terrorist attack in Kenya against our embassy…and an emboldening of terrorists in Somalia. It was also Bill Clinton who turned his back on our brave Rangers and Delta Force Soldiers in Somalia by denying them armor and C-130 gunship support in Mogadishu. And America is entertaining Hillary Clinton as President after she took part in abandoning Americans to die in Benghazi? Santayana said, "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Keep electing these weaklings, America, and more Americans will be attacked, and unfortunately lose their lives. The only way to deal with Islamists is to kill them, as the Al Shabab attackers stated, "there will be no negotiations.” I concur!
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Oh to be a fly on the wall at Tim Flannery's waterside property as he practises in the mirror for a job more suited to his talents. This time last week he was Australia's Climate Commissioner, on an A$180,000 a year salary which required him to work just three days a week. But incoming premier Tony Abbott's night of the green knives has put paid to that. Flannery's Mickey Mouse job has gone; so too has Australia's Climate Commission, a multi-million dollar, allegedly "independent", propaganda outlet set up by Julia Gillard to help give her climate alarmist policies – such as the hated carbon tax, which Abbott is also abolishing – a veneer of scientific credibility.

As Jo Nova notes, while it may be a good day for the Australian taxpayer, it is far too late now to recoup the billions which have already been wasted on the "expert" advice of Flannery and his alarmist chums David Karoly and Will Steffen.

This agency propped up billions of dollars in pointless futile government spending trying to change the weather. Nothing will bring back money spent on desal plants that were mothballed when the floods came that real scientists predicted. Likewise the money burned on solar panels and windfarms is gone for good too, and still going.

As you'll see at this website, one of the few things that Flannery is indisputably brilliant at is making idiotic statements and alarmist, pseudo-scientific predictions which seem to bear no relationship whatsoever to observed reality. So what, exactly, were his qualifications for taking on this supremely well-paid gig?

We-e-ll, Flannery is that most dangerous of things – an English literature graduate. Yes, I know I'm an English literature graduate too, but I'm the exception to the rule: on the whole, it would not be unfair to say, English literature graduates have done more to promote the cause of climate alarmism than any other category with the possible exception of "University" of East Anglia environmental "science" graduates.

Reflect, for a moment, on this grotesque rogues' gallery, every one of them an English Literature graduate.

Bryony Worthington (Friends of the Earth Activist; inspiration for Dave's "greenest government ever"; architect of the Climate Change Act)

Now, as it happens, I consider the cult of credentialism one of the curses of our age. Just because you've got some initials after your name doesn't mean you're not a pillock. And as we saw with the Climategate emails, being a qualified "climate scientist" is no guarantee of expertise on – or even entry-level understanding of – the science of climate. So I'm certainly not suggesting that Flannery's possession of an English literature degree should automatically have ruled him out of contention for the massively influential Climate Commissioner job. What I am definitely suggesting, though, is that if you're going to entrust the tenderest parts of your national economy to some random beardie bloke's sweaty grasp, the very least you owe all the millions of people who are going to be affected by his announcements is to do some due diligence, ask some basic questions like: "Does anything this random beardie bloke has ever said or done in his entire life render him suitable to comment definitively on an issue as complex, uncertain and contentious as climate change?"

To which the bleedingly obvious short answer is: "No."

After his English degree, Flannery managed to land (H/T Philip Bradley at Watts Up With That) a taxpayer-funded gig digging up kangaroo bones, which got him that impressive-sounding and all-important science PhD (palaeontology) before landing a job as a museum bureaucrat cum author of bestselling environmental alarmist books like The Future Eaters. (Sir David Attenborough once described him as 'in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone’ – which tells you rather more about the erratic judgement of David Attenborough than it does about the achievements of Tim Flannery).

Flannery, in other words, is a green activist who, like many of his kind – see Bryony Worthington; Roger Harrabin, above – has learned how to play the political system very much to his advantage. It is utterly inconceivable that anyone in the free market would ever pay someone so effectively useless so much money to do so little work for a job so utterly pointless as the one Flannery had as A$180,000 a year (for a three day week) Climate Commissioner.

If he were some weird aberration we could all, no doubt, have a jolly good laugh at the patent stupidity of it all and move on. Unfortunately, though we can't because Flannery is not some weird aberration. He is just one of the more egregiously idiotic examples of a phenomenon which is rife throughout the Western world: environmental activists being paid eyewatering sums of money to promote junk science, ramp up green taxes and regulations, hamstring free markets, enrich rent-seeking scumballs, drive up energy prices and spout scaremongering drivel, all courtesy of the taxpayer who benefits from one jot.

Consider, for example, The Carbon Trust – a quango to which the taxpayer forks out more than £127 million a year, so as to benefit from its expertise on "low carbon issues and strategies, carbon footprinting and low carbon technology development and deployment."

But hang on a second. Isn't all that "low carbon" nonsense starting to look a bit overtaken by events? Aren't we now fast reaching the stage where all the arguments in favour of committing suicide via "low carbon" have been torpedoed below the waterline? We know – as even the forthcoming IPCC report admits – that climate sensitivity has been overrated, thus making a mockery of all the doomsday scenarios fingering CO2 as a major threat. We also know – what with shale gas, shale oil, clathrates and thorium – that the fallback defence about "scarce resources" has been overdone too.

What we know, in other words, is that every penny of that £127 million we pay James Smith and his pals at The Carbon Trust to keep bigging up renewable energy and talking nonsense about climate change is money utterly and totally wasted. The same goes for the Department of Energy and Climate Change which could safely scrapped in its entirety tomorrow, without the slightest detrimental effect to anyone but the activists who staff it. The same goes for the £3.8 billion green investment bank. The same goes for much of the Met Office, the Royal Society, the British Antarctic Survey and the Science Museum, to name but a few of the once reputable publicly funded institutions which have been hijacked by political activists in order to further the cause of environmental alarmism.

===Tim Flannery removed from office
===Tim Flannery alarmist
===

HE knew he was going to die.

This Halloween marks the 20th anniversary of River Phoenix’s shocking overdose at Johnny Depp’s LA nightclub.

Now one of the last people to see Phoenix alive that night recounts what happened.

In his forthcoming book “Running with Monsters,” former Thelonious Monster frontman and “Celebrity Rehab” therapist Bob Forrest writes about his friend Phoenix’s downward spiral and sudden death.

At the time, 23-year-old Phoenix was one of the most famous young movie stars in the world, a respected actor with a pristine public image: a hippie vegan pacifist, beloved by all who knew and worked with him.

Shouts, screams... and then a sprint for their lives: Raw video footage shows full terror of moment Muslim terrorists struck at Nairobi mall Daily Mail, September 22, 2013 (thanks to super closer)

With gunshots ringing out amid screams and terrified shoppers diving for cover, this dramatic video today revealed the first moments of the deadly terrorist attack on a Kenyan shopping mall.The clip, taken yesterday by a journalist for CCTV Africa at the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, shows some people running or cowering behind shelves and boxes as others are heard shouting.Later on in the 90-second video – which was posted on YouTube at 7pm tonight – a man can be seen behind a door in the mall speaking on his mobile phone and saying: ‘They think they are terrorists’.

===Whenever a calamity falls upon Muslim-majority countries, there is always a country to blame: Israel. There is no need to look for any other reason. If there is a revolution against a tyrant regime subjugating its people, the Zionists are responsible. If there is a clash between Sunni and Shia groups – who else can be responsible? When a bomb explodes on the other side of the world or there is a problem with the economy – no need to look for anyone else. Where else can the control center for destabilizing the Arab world be but in Tel Aviv?
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In a show of force which contrasts with the relatively consilliatory statements by Iran's new president, the Iranianmilitary has paraded its arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israeli and other western targets, at a state parade on Sunday.

Iran paraded 30 missiles with a nominal range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) - the first time it had displayed so many with the theoretical capacity to hit Israeli targets.

The missiles on show included 12 Sejil and 18 Ghadr missiles, at the annual parade marking the 25th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The stated range of both missiles would put not only Israel but also US bases in the Gulf within reach.

But in his speech at the parade, President Hassan Rouhani insisted the weaponry on show was for defensive purposes only.

"In the past 200 years, Iran has never attacked another country," he said.

"Today too, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic and its leadership will never launch any aggressive action in the region. But they will always resist aggressors determinedly until victory."

The Sejil was first tested in November 2008 and the Ghadr in September of the following year.

Both are two-stage missiles that use solid fuel that allows them to be moved around and launched rapidly.

The parade came as tensions over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program continue to simmer, and as Israeli leaders continue to view with suspicion the newly-elected Iranian president's overtures to western powers.

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Israel's Deputy Defense Minister has called on the Israeli government to "annul the Oslo Accords," and adopt an alternative to the much-touted "Two State Solution" which would see the establishment of aPalestinian Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, MK Danny Danon insists that, twenty years after the signing of the Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, "The government of Israel must admit that we made a mistake and declare that the Oslo process has failed."

It is a very public act of dissent by an Israeli minister, as Prime Minister Netanyahu's government continues to embark on negotiations with thePalestinian Authority within the "Two-State Solution" paradigm.

But Danon - who is not only a government minister, but a member of the same party as the PM - points to the fact that the rate of Israelis killed by Arab terrorists increased significantly following the Oslo Accords and subsequent Israeli concessions to the PA, suggesting that such a "paradigm" merely exacerbates the conflict as opposed to providing a viable solution to it.

Danon insists that the failure of Oslo is not due to a lack of Israeli efforts to reach a peace deal, citing numerous Israeli initiatives and concessions - including the deportation of thousands of Jewish civilians and the destruction of Israeli communities - none of which resulted in peace. Instead, he says, it is the PA's refusal to accept the existence of the State of Israel as a permanent reality which has prevented peace.

"The murder of soldier Tomer Hazan z”l is a terrible reminder that Israel deals daily with the murderous terrorism of beastly people,” said Lapid.

“We must not leave the security of Israel to anyone except ourselves,” he added.

Hazan was abducted Friday and murdered in Samaria by Nadal Amar, an Arab terrorist from the village of Bayt Amin, near Kalkilya. Amar, who worked at a restaurant in Bat Yam with Hazan, had somehow convinced Hazan to take a cab with him to Samaria, where he proceeded to murder him and dispose of his body.

Early morning Saturday, IDF forces, together with Yamam special police and Shin Bet, raided the home of Amar's family and arrested him, together with another brother. Nadal Amar confessed under interrogationthat he persuaded the soldier to come to his village and murdered him.

Following his confession, Amar led security forces to the body. It is believed Amar may have planned to demand that Israel release his brother, a Fatah terrorist who has been imprisoned for a decade, in exchange for Hazan’s body.

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Palestinian territorial contiguity is dangerous for Israeli national security. For security and demographic reason, Israel must retain as much land as possible in the West Bank. Evacuation of these areas will create a dangerous situation for Israeli security and eventually will necessitate reconquering extensive parts of the West Bank. There is no reason to dismantle and destroy the existing settlements, rather we propose the creation of seven independent and separate city-states within the West Bank, in addition to Gaza.

Premise:

There is no reason to assume that a Palestinian state will not become another failing Arab state, due to the fragmented society in the West Bank and Gaza, tribalism and the lack of awareness of nationhood as demonstrated by the failing performance of the Palestinian Authority since its establishment in 1994.

Since nobody in the world can assure that a Palestinian state will never turn – like Gaza – into an Islamic terror state, any solution for the Palestinians must minimize its potential threats on Israel, on the region and on the world.

Social stability is the key for political stability. Many existing Arab states are models only of ineffectual governance; the only successful model for an Arab state is the one which is based on a single consolidated traditional group such as each of the individual Arab Gulf Emirates. The standard Arab states - Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, which are conglomerates of tribes, religions, sects and ethnic groups – present the opposite picture. It is our belief that the successful Emirate model can be implemented in the Palestinian case more easily and successfully than the failing Arab model.

"Lavrov further charged that the West was “not telling the whole story” by asserting that chemical weapons are only possessed by the regime, and not the opposition.

He added that the available information provided by the Israelis confirmed that on at least two occasions, the rebels had seized areas in which chemical weapons were stored and those arms might have fallen into their hands.

"According to our estimates, there is a strong probability that in addition to home-grown labs in which militants are trying to cook up harmful and deadly concoctions, the data provided by the Israelis is true,” the Russian FM said." - excerpt....'Lavrov: US pressuring Russia into passing UN resolution on Syria under Chapter 7' - RT News

http://bcove.me/xiuzbwww
===Israeli forces were Sunday reportedly helping Kenyan officials end a deadly siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, where al-Qaeda-linked terrorists have been holed up for a day with some 30 hostages.
===...Despite the largest, most sustained program of foreign aid in the history of mankind, Palestinian life continues to be lived inside garbage cans and slums. The money, most of it European, did not disappear, as people frequently erroneously say. It simply reached the hands of the Palestinian insiders who - for generations - have built personal fortunes by controlling its kleptocracy. And there it stays, as it traditionally has.
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According to theWorld Health Organization, a staggering 140 million girls worldwide are currently living with the consequences of female genital mutilation (FGM). The procedure (carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15) is designed to alter the female genital organs, and is “motivated by the desire to reduce a woman’s sexual desires”. The WHO notes that “the practice is most common in the western, eastern, and northeastern regions of Africa, in some countries in Asia and the Middle East, and among migrants from these areas.”

Homa Khaleeli, a staff feature writer for the Guardian, penned a heartbreaking essay at ‘Comment is Free’ (Female Genital Mutilation: Mothers need to say no‘, Sept. 8) about the practice of FGM, focusing largely on the personal account of Faduma Ali, who, at age 86, still remembers the pain of being circumcised when she was a young girl in Somalia. Khaleeli, in providing background on the horrific practice, notes that It has been documented in 28 countries in Africa and in a few countries in Asia and the Middle East, and that though it’s outlawed in the UK it is still performed there within some immigrant communities.

Khaleeli, after including some of the shocking details on the cruel manner in which the procedure is usually performed, throws in the following:

Although Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities carry out FGM, mainstream spiritual leaders from all three religions have denied that the practice stems from religion.

The claim that Muslims, Christians, and Jews practicing FGM seems like nothing but a throw-away line, and indeed Jewish scholars have observed the near complete absence of the practice within ancient and modern Jewish communities. Harvard Professor Shaye J.D. Cohen in “Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism”, wrote the following:

Aside from the Beta Israel of Ethiopia (the so-called Falashas) … no Jewish community, in either ancient, medieval or modern times, is known to have practiced female circumcision. … The practice of the Beta Israel is simply part of general Ethiopian culture, in which female circumcision is widely practiced, and is not a relic of some long-lost Jewish tradition.

And, while it may have been once practiced by an extremely small number of Ethiopians from this community, it died outwhen they moved to Israel.

A 2012 studyat the Beersheva Mental Health Center of Ben Gurion University, published in the Journal of Israeli Psychiatry, by Dr RH Belmaker, included the following:

Jews from Arab countries where FGM is practiced do not practice FGM. However, major immigration of Jews from Ethiopia to Israel permitted study of this practice. We confirmed the report that Ethiopian Jews did practice FGM in Ethiopia (17). Moreover,we reported the dramatic and total cessation of this custom among this community after immigration to Israel. This study of FGM is one of the few to combine anthropological interviewing techniques with physical gynecological examination

Given that there are no Jews remaining in Ethiopia (after the final airlifts in Augustof immigrants known as Falash Mura, Ethiopians who claim links to descendants of Jews who converted to Christianity generations ago but now seek to return to the faith) it is extremely unlikely that Jews anywhere in the world are currently practicing FGM.

The extremely broad claim by Khaleeli that “Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities carry out FGM” represents Guardian Left double-speak at its worst at worst – attempting, for ideological reasons, to obfuscate the clear cultural-religious disparities in the barbaric practice.

Update 1: Naturally, the ‘superblogger’ Elder of Ziyon also superbly fisked the Guardian commentary. See here.

Update 2: The Guardian has corrected the article and removed the offending passage. The following has been added:

This article was amended on 9 September 2013. The original included a phrase which could be read to mean that FGM was practised within the Jewish community. That is not the case although there is some evidence that FGM was practised within a minor Ethiopian Jewish sect.

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |Charles Darwin struggled with a paradox: If evolution is a struggle for survival, how could generosity, compassion, and other altruistic virtues have spread through natural selection?

Darwin could see the clear evolutionary benefit to groups that inculcated ethical values in their members. Imagine, he wrote in The Descent of Man, two competing primitive tribes, equally matched — except that "one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, [and] to aid and defend each other." There was little doubt that tribes highly endowed with such virtues "would spread and be victorious over other tribes."

But there was a problem: How did any tribe evolve such ethical qualities in the first place? Brave individuals who risked their lives for others "would on average perish in larger numbers than other men." It hardly seemed possible, Darwin conceded, that "such virtues … could be increased through natural selection, that is, by the survival of the fittest."

Darwin's paradox has generated a vast literature in evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. Scientists have demonstrated that humans have a hard-wired moral capacity; we are born with an aptitude for empathy and fairness that is built into our biology. Recent neurological experiments, for example, demonstrate that an act of generosity, such as donating to charity, triggers a pleasurable response in the brain.

Of course, having a capacity is not the same as using it. The human brain is hard-wired to learn multiple languages, too, but how many of us ever master more than one? Our moral sense may be genetically encoded, but we aren't robots. We have free will. Each of us must choose to be decent or indecent. And there is no denying that indecent choices can also convey rewards.

Start your consideration by establishing priorities, clarifying what matters most to the country. TheObama administration rightly points to two urgent matters: stopping the Iranian nuclear buildup and maintaining the security of Israel. To these, I add a third: reestablishing the U.S. deterrent credibility laid low by Barack Obama himself.

Note that this list conspicuously does not mention the Syrian regime's chemical arsenal (the largest in the world) or its recent use. That's because those pale in horror and in danger by comparison with the nuclear weapons now under construction in Iran. Also, the attack in Ghouta, Syria, on Aug. 21 was appalling, but not worse than killing a hundred times more civilians through other means, including torture. Further, that attack breached multiple international conventions, but surely no one expects "limited strikes" to restrain desperate dictators.

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My message to the Arab-Palestinians, the Arab world and

Israel's saboteurs

Please hear me out well:

Religion: Our religion is Judaism. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion known to man. With the ten commandments God gave to the Israelites through Moses, Jews own the copyright to human rights.

Judaism is the only religion that never did and does not proselytize; it never killed and does not kill in the name of religion and did not and does not enforce itself on others.Therefore, Judaism is a peaceful religion. Christianity amended its way and it is now a peaceful religion. Islam is a merciless religion. Moslems kill for the sake of Islam, whether their own of different factions or non-Moslems. Therefore, Islam is not a religion of peace. Far from it. With that fact in mind we need to treat you as the messenger of war, not peace.

Islam, caries deep seated hatred for Jews. We are going to end it. This hatred for Israel will no longer be tolerated. We have set up our Modus Operandi to undo your hatred toward us. When you amend your ways, we will notice it and then we will agree to talk again.

Israel's exceptionalism: Israel is an exceptional state when it comes to helping other states; it widely shares its various advanced technologies in the fields of medicine, agriculture, energy and hi-tech, to name a few.

When it comes to a catastrophe somewhere in the world, Israeli teams will be among the first, if not the first, to arrive and help the disaster stricken area.

Arab aggression: Your campaign to subvert Israel in the international arena, in any way possible, will come to an end. Israel will no longer tolerate these tactics you have managed to instill so well and so wide in the global arena. We can fight it and we will gain the upper hand.

Peace brokerage charade: Possible good intentions do not mean good conduct that brings good result. Politics can be a very evil game with false intentions and bad results for which the people end up paying with blood and tears. Possible good intentions and politics concoction have ended up being bad karma for Israel; they have put Israel in danger and eroded her security. Israel have decided to no longer tolerate those trying to broker peace between her and her hostile neighbors, but instead are making achieving the goal of peace an impossible task.

Measures:

My people will no longer provide you with funds to advance your rather peaceless goals.

My people will no longer provide you with electricity for which you fail to pay.

My people will no longer continue be part of the many joint projects currently underway between Arab-Palestinians and Israelis. You do not realize, or appreciate, what a gift they are to your people. More so, you are likely to destroy them, as you have destroyed the hi-tech hot houses farms we left for you in Gaza. You prefer to launch rocket from there rather than grow and sell vegetables and flowers. We were not forced to enter into these projects; they come about from the willing hearts of good Israelis who want to help you prosper. Israel will mandate that all these projects come to a halt till you mend your ways.

From today on, ALL Israeli goods, whether services, products, or hardware, will be labeled 'Made In Israel,' even if they were produced or made in Judea and Samaria or the Golan Heights. The hidden channels, whether a third party or a hidden label name, we have been using to overcome the problem of goods originating from Judea and Samaria are now null and void. We are proud of what we make, grow, create, invent and we will announce it to the world under the name "Israel".

All Arabs need to know that Israel is a powerhouse of inventions and technology. Many of the products she sells in the world her foes have no option but to use them, because the Jewish state is the only source for them. But you are welcome to take your business elsewhere and we will see how far you go. People with hate in their hearts end up losing.

Israel can offer any country in the world the most important components required to grow an economy and that included the rather lagging behind Arab countries. These components will help create better conditions for the people, improve their health and longevity and help their country thrive; take a good look at our country only 65 years old. Israel is thriving, wouldn't you want to emulate us?

Corrective measures:

So here is what I suggest: when you are finally ready to make genuine peace with us, with or without a piece of paper, we are ready to welcome you. No games, no taqiyya tricks, no pretence. We have got your number and we no longer buy into it. Look at Egypt; President Sadat came to Israel to show peace goodwill. Sadly, his dream did not live long and the Egyptians have not taken advantage of the peace status and got Israel to help them in so many ways, as she could have. Egypt's economy remained failing miserably.

Israel has much to offer, you have not. So when you are ready to buy we will begin negotiating.

You got us this time as well. We buckled. You have demanded preconditions in order to agree to sit and talk with us. We began releasing terrorists who killed our innocent citizens in order for you to agree to talk with us about giving up our land. And you celebrated these monsters return into your society. What a shameful behavior. If the shoe was on the other foot, if Israel cheered the return of murders who killed your innocent how would you feel? We know how! That is the last time you get us. The talks will continue without releasing the rest of the list of terrorists. Take it or leave it. You walk away from these peace talks you bear the consequences that will be far reaching.

We now demand that you begin showing your people, in all your media outlets, the truth about Israel, what is Israel all about. How Israel has continued helping you despite all the wars you have launched against us. You will erase the pig and ape image you have made us to be. Not that pigs and apes are not nice animals, but they cannot be compared to human beings.

We now demand that you change your school curriculum. You burn your old books and start anew. You teach your kids that Jews are fine people. You teach that you were evil to the Jews for many decades. That Israel has the right to be a Jewish state and you respect it. You teach that you illegally held to land that legally belongs to Israel for two decades. Then when you lost the war Israel returned that land to her sovereignty and she has the right to all of it. And you teach that when you lose the war you pay the consequences.

You teach that you lost the war you perpetrated against Israel. That many countries around the world have lost territory in battles which they lost and by international law they then lost their right to return to that territory, the right to that land. What they gained was the responsibility to make a good life in the countries in which they were left to live.

We now demand that you end making martyrs of those who have killed our people. We demand you rename all the streets, schools, sport teams, parks, and other venues, now carrying the names of murderers of Jews. You end up being inhumane.

It is now up to you to show us you can really be a good neighbor. Until then we have nothing to talk about. You have nothing to offer to us that we want but a huge headache. Under today's circumstances, the peace we seek you cannot yet deliver.When we are convinced that you are making the long overdue changes, and that will take a generation or so to apply, not only we will embrace you as good neighbors, we will work with you, side by side, and build an amazing Middle East that will grow and prosper for yours and our future generations.

Our father of Zionism, Theodor, Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl said, "If you will it, it is not a dream-a legend"

We have never wanted anything from you but to leave us alone and have peaceful relations with you. You showed us that all you wanted and still want is to destroy us in wars you launched against us and many other means, such as political, media, and economic warfare. Now you need to show us that you want exactly what we want, peace, real peace.

Nurit Greenger sees Israel and the United States equally, as the last two forts of true democratic freedom and since 2006, has been writing about events in these two countries. Contact her by writing to nurit.4.nuritg@gmail.com Read more stories by Nurit Greenger.

- See more at: http://newsblaze.com/story/20130908081627nurg.nb/topstory.html#sthash.RhU0K2JA.0ydUFCjJ.dpuf
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In the attempt to demonize Israel, the Palestinian Authority has a policy of slandering Israel with libels and lies. One recurring libel documented byPalestinian Media Watch is that Israel deliberately spreads drugs to harm Palestinian youth in Jerusalem to destroy their future.

In an interview on official PA TV, PA District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam accused Israel of spreading drugs:

Earlier this year, Khaled Hammad, Deputy Director of the Jerusalem Education Administration, claimed that Israel deliberately attempts to turn young Palestinians into drug addicts because Israelis "have no interest in an educated [Palestinian] generation developing":

"These people [Israelis] don't want an educated and learned generation [of Arabs] in Jerusalem at all. They try to turn Jerusalem's [Arab] youth into drug addicts just like all the things that are done against the residents of Jerusalem."

The following are longer excerpts of the statements accusing Israel of deliberately spreading drugs among Palestinians:

"District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh, Laila Ghannam... said: 'Like any nation in the world, we have social problems...' She made it clear that the main problem from which the district suffers is drug distribution, and said: 'The occupation is the biggest problem and drugs are one of the means with which the occupation planned to harm our society's infrastructure and our youth.' Nonetheless, she emphasized that drugs have not reached the level of a social phenomenon."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 22, 2013]

PA TV's Young People of the Country's reporter Hiba Hassoun presented topics discussed on the program during the year, including:"The drugs that the occupation is trying to spread among our young people in Area C that is under Israeli control."

"Everyone should take part, not only the [Palestinian] state's institutions and the official forces, in the battle against this plague (i.e., drugs)... There is an occupation and there is also an enemy: Drugs spread by the occupation."

"The occupation controls the land and tries to control the [Arab] residents of Jerusalem. One of the weapons it uses to Judaize Jerusalem is drugs."

[Official Palestinian Authority TV, June 26, 2013]

Note: The NGO Al- Maqdese for Society Development lists on its website the organization's "Donors and Partners", among them: UNDP (United Nations Development Program), UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), EU, France, Spain, Italy, the American organization National Endowment for Democracy, Norwegian People's Aid, Polish Aid, and Save the Children - Sweden.

[Al-Maqdese website, accessed Aug. 4, 2013

http://www.al-maqdese.org/en/2/1/110]

PA TV's program for young people, Speak Up, interviewed Khaled Hammad, Deputy Director of the Jerusalem Education Administration, about the reasons students drop out of school.

Khaled Hammad: "They [the students who dropped out of school] mentioned many things. It could be that getting connected with negative elements plays [a part]. And sometimes the occupation has a hidden role in this."

PA TV host: "Of course."

Khaled Hammad: "These people [Israelis] don't want an educated and learned generation [of Arabs] in Jerusalem at all. They try to turn Jerusalem's [Arab] youth into drug addicts just like all the things that are done against the residents of Jerusalem."

[Official Palestinian Authority TV, Jan. 20, 2013,

co-produced with PYALARA (EU-funded NGO]

PYALARA's website mentions that it is sponsored by NDC. NDC lists as its supporters the European Union, the World Bank, the French government's Agence Française de Développement, a donor consortium of Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Palestinian Appeal, and the Palestinian private organization the Welfare Association.

I am scheduled to speak in Markham, Ontario along with my colleague Robert Spencer Tuesday evening. Apparently the opposition couldn't get the police to do their dirty work this time, as they did last spring, when members of the York Regional Police force strongarmed a rabbi into canceling my scheduled talk at his synagogue. That talk went on as scheduled in a different venue, and now that those cops are under investigation, Muslim Brotherhood proxies are trying to get Spencer and me banned from Canada now.

In connection with my earlier police-induced cancellation, Mark Steyn pointed out that Canadian officials have turned a blind eye to real preachers of hate: "Pamela Geller, tireless campaigner against Islamic imperialism (and a lady I had the honor of being introduced by at CPAC a few years back), was scheduled to give a speech at a Toronto synagogue on May 13. Miss Geller is not a convicted terrorist or terrorism-supporter or someone who argues for the execution of all homosexuals. If she were, she could speak at any Canadian venue with impunity."

As always, the media eagerly carries water for Islamic supremacists and Sharia thugs. Nevertheless, every time it happens, it's astounding. The Huffington Post carried a Canadian Press story about this "controversy" over the upcoming talk, with the headline "Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer Toronto Talk Flagged By Canadian Muslim Leaders." The story said: "The National Council of Canadian Muslims worries Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer will spread 'hate and misinformation' about the Islamic faith when they speak at a Toronto-area hotel Tuesday evening, the group's executive director said."

Our talk has been "flagged by Canadian Muslim leaders" who are worried that we will spread "hate and misinformation." "Canadian Muslim leaders"? "Hate and misinformation?" Actually, the group that is complaining, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, was up until recently known as CAIR-Canada. It is still the Canadian branch of the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The NCCN is not "Canadian Muslim leaders," it's Hamas-CAIR, a Muslim Brotherhood front group, named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding trial.

And even if they were legitimate "Muslim leaders," what moral authority does that give them? Osama bin Laden was a Muslim leader, as was Anwar al-Awlaki, and as are Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohamed Morsi, and Anjem Choudary. It is not Spencer and I, but "Muslim leaders" like these who are the ones who are really spreading hate. Their bigotry and racism is real, the human toll incalculable.

Truth is now hate. And what misinformation exactly do I spread? I merely quote devout Muslims. Fighting for freedom, equality for all and individual rights is "hate and misinformation?" Only under the Sharia. But that's how far down the rabbit hole the media and the culture have crawled.

Here's a video of my previous talk in Canada that these vicious thugs tried to shut down. Where's the hate?And they didn't just "flag" our talk: these brutes and thugs are attempting to destroy freedom of speech and impose the blasphemy laws under Islamic law.

Why aren't these Muslim organizations denouncing the hundreds of jihadist groups that are waging holy war across the world? Why isn't this Muslim group that is so intent on keeping our message from reaching Canada taking on jihadists across the world?

And why aren't I called for comment on stories like this, instead of their always being a completely one-sided presentation of the views of the enemies of freedom? Why isn't Robert Spencer given an opportunity to respond to the defamation and lies from these friends and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood groups that are waging jihad across the world? Why do these thugs have such unfettered access to the press, while those who are defending freedom never can get a fair hearing?

The outrageous media double standard has to end. Free people must not stand idly by while our most basic, fundamental freedoms are silently seized and destroyed.

One: Other than aid and official government rhetoric, the United States is now neutral on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, to put it more accurately, tilting toward the Palestinian side. This does not mean disaster for Israel—and no Israeli official will say so in public–but it is a strategic reality. Part of the dynamic motivating this U.S. policy is that:

–The White House believes it can win over “moderate Islamists” in power as in Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iran, and Syria, among other countries. This would form a pro-U.S. bloc against al-Qaida and, secondarily the Iran-Syria bloc. Only al-Qaida cannot be won over; but the White House believes that even the Taliban, the Tehran rulers, Hezbollah, and Hamas might be convinced. (I’m not kidding and can prove it.)

I did not enter the kingdom as a diplomat, soldier, teacher, journalist or foreign aid worker. I came as a young Jewish bride of the son of one of the country's wealthiest men. I was held in a type of captivity — but it's not as if I had been kidnapped.

I walked into it of my own free will.

It is 1959. I am only 18 when my prince — a dark, older, handsome, westernized foreigner who had traveled abroad from his native home in Afghanistan — bedazzles me.

We meet at Bard College, where he is studying economics and politics and I am studying literature on scholarship.

Abdul-Kareem is the son of one of the founders of the modern banking system in Afghanistan. He wears designers sunglasses and bespoke suits and when he visits New York City, he stays at the Plaza.

He is also Muslim.

I am Jewish, raised in an Orthodox home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the daughter of Polish immigrants. My dad worked door-to-door selling soda and seltzer.

But none of this matters. We don't talk about religion. Instead, we stay up all night discussing film, opera and theater. We are bohemians.

We date for two years. Then, when I express my desire to travel, he asks me to marry him.

"There is no other way for us to travel together in the Muslim world," he says.

A TWIN suicide bombing killed more than 70 people at a church service in northwest Pakistan in what is believed to be the deadliest attack on Christians in the country.

The two attackers struck at the end of a service at All Saints Church in Peshawar, the main town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which has borne the brunt of a bloody Islamist insurgency in recent years.

Doctor Arshad Javed of Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital said 72 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded.

Provincial health minister Shaukat Ali Yousufzai confirmed the death toll and said the provincial government had announced a three-day period of mourning in the state.

Sahibzada Anees, one of Peshawar's most senior officials, told reporters the bombers struck when the service had just ended.

"Most of the wounded are in critical condition," Anees said.

"We are in an area which is a target of terrorism and within that area there was a special security arrangement for the church. We are in a rescue phase and once it is over we will investigate what went wrong."

Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan.

The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in the overwhelmingly Muslim-majority nation but bombings against them are extremely rare.

Schoolteacher Nazir Khan, 50, said the service had just ended and at least 400 worshippers were greeting each other when there was a huge explosion.

"A huge blast threw me on the floor and as soon as I regained my senses, a second blast took place and I saw wounded people everywhere," Mr Khan said.

An AFP reporter saw shreds of human flesh and bloodstains on the walls and floor of the church, whose windows had been ripped apart by the blast.

Pages of a Bible were scattered near the altar and rice meals mingled with dust on the floor amid shattered benches. Walls were gouged with ball bearings used in the explosives, he said.

Grieving relatives blocked the main Grand Trunk Road highway with bodies of the victims to protest against the killings.

Christians in Karachi, Lahore, Multan and other cities also staged protest rallies to condemn the killings and demand state protection for their lives and properties.

In the southern port city of Karachi angry protesters clashed with police when they tried to clear a road in Isa Nagri, a low-income Christian neighbourhood.

Pakistan's Ulema Council, an association of leading Muslim scholars, strongly condemned the church attack and said killing innocent people breaches the tenets of Islam.

"It is an extremely shameful attack which has shamed all Pakistanis and Muslims," Allama Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chief of the council, said.

"There is no room for such terrorist acts in Islam."

Sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims is on the rise in Pakistan. Sunday's attack will fuel fears the already beleaguered Christian community could be increasingly targeted.

Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of bombings targeting security forces and minority Muslim groups they regard as heretical, but attacks on Christians have previously largely been confined to grenade attacks and occasional riots.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a deeply conservative province bordering the tribal districts along the Afghan frontier which are home to Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

Mr Ghauri, the provincial lawmaker, said there were about 200,000 Christians in the province, of whom 70,000 lived in Peshawar.

"Now after this attack Christians across Pakistan will fear for their lives," he warned.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the bombings.

"Terrorists have no religion and targeting innocent people is against the teachings of Islam and all religions," he said in a statement.

Mr Sharif said such "cruel acts of terrorism reflect the brutality and inhumane mindset of the terrorists".

Only around 2 per cent of Pakistan's population of 180 million are Christian. The community complains of growing discrimination.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached crisis levels.

Christians have a precarious existence in Pakistan, often living in slum-like "colonies" cheek-by-jowl with Muslims and fearful of allegations of blasphemy, a sensitive subject that can provoke outbursts of public violence.

In the town of Gojra in Punjab province in 2009, a mob burned 77 houses and killed seven people after rumours that a copy of the Islamic holy book the Koran had been desecrated during a Christian marriage ceremony.

Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl who was arrested for alleged blasphemy last year, fled to Canada with her family in June after the charges were dropped.

The two attackers struck at the end of a service at All Saints Church in Peshawar, the main town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which has borne the brunt of a bloody Islamist insurgency in recent years.

Doctor Arshad Javed of Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital said 72 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded.

Provincial health minister Shaukat Ali Yousufzai confirmed the death toll and said the provincial government had announced a three-day period of mourning in the state.

Sahibzada Anees, one of Peshawar's most senior officials, told reporters the bombers struck when the service had just ended.

"Most of the wounded are in critical condition," Anees said.

"We are in an area which is a target of terrorism and within that area there was a special security arrangement for the church. We are in a rescue phase and once it is over we will investigate what went wrong."

Former minister for inter-faith harmony Paul Bhatti and provincial lawmaker Fredrich Azeem Ghauri both said the attack was the deadliest ever targeting Christians in Pakistan.

The small and largely impoverished Christian community suffers discrimination in the overwhelmingly Muslim-majority nation but bombings against them are extremely rare.

Schoolteacher Nazir Khan, 50, said the service had just ended and at least 400 worshippers were greeting each other when there was a huge explosion.

"A huge blast threw me on the floor and as soon as I regained my senses, a second blast took place and I saw wounded people everywhere," Mr Khan said.

An AFP reporter saw shreds of human flesh and bloodstains on the walls and floor of the church, whose windows had been ripped apart by the blast.

Pages of a Bible were scattered near the altar and rice meals mingled with dust on the floor amid shattered benches. Walls were gouged with ball bearings used in the explosives, he said.

Grieving relatives blocked the main Grand Trunk Road highway with bodies of the victims to protest against the killings.

Christians in Karachi, Lahore, Multan and other cities also staged protest rallies to condemn the killings and demand state protection for their lives and properties.

In the southern port city of Karachi angry protesters clashed with police when they tried to clear a road in Isa Nagri, a low-income Christian neighbourhood.

Pakistan's Ulema Council, an association of leading Muslim scholars, strongly condemned the church attack and said killing innocent people breaches the tenets of Islam.

"It is an extremely shameful attack which has shamed all Pakistanis and Muslims," Allama Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, chief of the council, said.

"There is no room for such terrorist acts in Islam."

Sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims is on the rise in Pakistan. Sunday's attack will fuel fears the already beleaguered Christian community could be increasingly targeted.

Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of bombings targeting security forces and minority Muslim groups they regard as heretical, but attacks on Christians have previously largely been confined to grenade attacks and occasional riots.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a deeply conservative province bordering the tribal districts along the Afghan frontier which are home to Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

Mr Ghauri, the provincial lawmaker, said there were about 200,000 Christians in the province, of whom 70,000 lived in Peshawar.

"Now after this attack Christians across Pakistan will fear for their lives," he warned.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the bombings.

"Terrorists have no religion and targeting innocent people is against the teachings of Islam and all religions," he said in a statement.

Mr Sharif said such "cruel acts of terrorism reflect the brutality and inhumane mindset of the terrorists".

Only around 2 per cent of Pakistan's population of 180 million are Christian. The community complains of growing discrimination.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached crisis levels.

Christians have a precarious existence in Pakistan, often living in slum-like "colonies" cheek-by-jowl with Muslims and fearful of allegations of blasphemy, a sensitive subject that can provoke outbursts of public violence.

In the town of Gojra in Punjab province in 2009, a mob burned 77 houses and killed seven people after rumours that a copy of the Islamic holy book the Koran had been desecrated during a Christian marriage ceremony.

Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl who was arrested for alleged blasphemy last year, fled to Canada with her family in June after the charges were dropped.

John TranIf all that a political party stands for is vicious infighting, then I am not sure if a genuine aspiring kind of person that wants to help their country is even around within the labor party for them to choose.. this is all in assuming that some 'left' political ideaology is even relevant today.

Morning

Be glad of heart, O believer, but take care that thy gladness has its spring in the Lord. Thou hast much cause for gladness in thy God, for thou canst sing with David, "God, my exceeding joy." Be glad that the Lord reigneth, that Jehovah is King! Rejoice that he sits upon the throne, and ruleth all things! Every attribute of God should become a fresh ray in the sunlight of our gladness. That he is wise should make us glad, knowing as we do our own foolishness. That he is mighty, should cause us to rejoice who tremble at our weakness. That he is everlasting, should always be a theme of joy when we know that we wither as the grass. That he is unchanging, should perpetually yield us a song, since we change every hour. That he is full of grace, that he is overflowing with it, and that this grace in covenant he has given to us; that it is ours to cleanse us, ours to keep us, ours to sanctify us, ours to perfect us, ours to bring us to glory--all this should tend to make us glad in him. This gladness in God is as a deep river; we have only as yet touched its brink, we know a little of its clear sweet, heavenly streams, but onward the depth is greater, and the current more impetuous in its joy. The Christian feels that he may delight himself not only in what God is, but also in all that God has done in the past. The Psalms show us that God's people in olden times were wont to think much of God's actions, and to have a song concerning each of them. So let God's people now rehearse the deeds of the Lord! Let them tell of his mighty acts, and "sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously." Nor let them ever cease to sing, for as new mercies flow to them day by day, so should their gladness in the Lord's loving acts in providence and in grace show itself in continued thanksgiving. Be glad ye children of Zion and rejoice in the Lord your God.

Evening

"When my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."Psalm 61:2

Most of us know what it is to be overwhelmed in heart; emptied as when a man wipeth a dish and turneth it upside down; submerged and thrown on our beam ends like a vessel mastered by the storm. Discoveries of inward corruption will do this, if the Lord permits the great deep of our depravity to become troubled and cast up mire and dirt. Disappointments and heart-breaks will do this when billow after billow rolls over us, and we are like a broken shell hurled to and fro by the surf. Blessed be God, at such seasons we are not without an all-sufficient solace, our God is the harbour of weather-beaten sails, the hospice of forlorn pilgrims. Higher than we are is he, his mercy higher than our sins, his love higher than our thoughts. It is pitiful to see men putting their trust in something lower than themselves; but our confidence is fixed upon an exceeding high and glorious Lord. A Rock he is since he changes not, and a high Rock, because the tempests which overwhelm us roll far beneath at his feet; he is not disturbed by them, but rules them at his will. If we get under the shelter of this lofty Rock we may defy the hurricane; all is calm under the lee of that towering cliff. Alas! such is the confusion in which the troubled mind is often cast, that we need piloting to this divine shelter. Hence the prayer of the text. O Lord, our God, by thy Holy Spirit, teach us the way of faith, lead us into thy rest. The wind blows us out to sea, the helm answers not to our puny hand; thou, thou alone canst steer us over the bar between yon sunken rocks, safe into the fair haven. How dependent we are upon thee--we need thee to bring us to thee. To be wisely directed and steered into safety and peace is thy gift, and thine alone. This night be pleased to deal well with thy servants.

Today's Old Testament reading: Ecclesiastes 10-12

1 As dead flies give perfume a bad smell,so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.2 The heart of the wise inclines to the right,but the heart of the fool to the left.3 Even as fools walk along the road,they lack senseand show everyone how stupid they are.4 If a ruler’s anger rises against you,do not leave your post;calmness can lay great offenses to rest.

5 There is an evil I have seen under the sun,the sort of error that arises from a ruler:6 Fools are put in many high positions,while the rich occupy the low ones.7 I have seen slaves on horseback,while princes go on foot like slaves....

Today's New Testament reading: Galatians 1

1 Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers and sisters with me,

To the churches in Galatia:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

No Other Gospel

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ....

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV).

Friend to Friend

Julianna came out of the womb ready to meet every challenge with determination, every celebration with enthusiasm, and every mystery with the passion of discovery. Her fiery red hair was matched only by her fiery personality. She never did anything half-way, but with the throttle full speed ahead. Of the Price's three children, Julianna was the one who frequented the emergency room for stitches due to throwing caution to the wind as she whirled through her childhood.

One day when Julianna was twelve years old, she rushed out her front door on her way to dance class. She slammed the door behind her as she hurried to catch her ride, but the door closed before all of her fingers followed her body across the threshold. Now you have probably have slammed your fingers in a door a time or two, and can remember wincing a bit. But Julianna never does anything half-way. She jerked to a sudden halt, spun around quickly, and saw her appendages trapped in the closed door. When she opened the door to remove her hand, she was horrified to discover that all of it was not there. She had amputated the upper third of her second right finger.

"Help! Somebody help me! I've just cut off my finger!"

Fortunately, the woman picking her up for dance class was a nurse. She rushed to the screaming ballerina. "Julianna, where's your mom?" she asked.

"Quick," the neighbor instructed, "Let's put some pressure on that nub. Daniel, come help us!" she yelled.

Daniel, Julianna's fifteen-year-old brother, ran down the stairs at the cry for help.

"Julianna's just cut her finger off. You have to find it. We've got to put it in ice and take her to the hospital right away."

A pale-faced Daniel went to the scene of the accident. As he hung his head, he saw the finger lying at his feet. Trying not to lose his breakfast, Daniel picked up his sister's digit in a towel and handed it over to the nurse.

Well the good news is that they got to the hospital in time. The skilled doctor put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and told them to pray that the finger would reattach.

"We'll keep our fingers crossed," he said with a grin as he walked out of the treatment room.

A few days later Julianna unwrapped the bandages, afraid of what she might find underneath. What she saw was not a pretty sight. Instead of a finger, she saw a black mushroom-like thimble sitting atop her nub.

"Doctor, we took the bandage off today. It's black and crusty and looks like a mushroom cap," her mom reported. "It looks dead."

"That's fine," he reassured her. "Don't worry. If nature is working properly, and it sounds like it is, the top will turn black, but underneath, nerves and blood vessels are reattaching. Underneath the thimble, a new finger is forming. She needs the old part in order for the new part to form underneath. In about three weeks, we'll know if the procedure worked. Just keep it wrapped and clean."

A few weeks after the accident, Julianna came to spend the night with us while she was attending a dance camp in my hometown. I had the pleasure of her company and the displeasure of changing her bandage. Her description was accurate.

Four weeks after Julianna had returned home, she wrote me a thank-you note for having her in our home. She ended by saying, "P.S. Guess what? My crusty thimble fell off and I have a new finger!"

Now don't ask me how this happened. It is a mystery to me. But scripture tells of another mystery that is just as amazing. Another grafting process that is just as miraculous. When God warned Adam and Eve not to eat of fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He told them that their punishment for disobedience would be death. They did eat - and immediately their spirits died- their zoe life was taken away and they were cut off from God. As a result, every person after that time has been born with a dead spirit, including you and me.

But God didn't leave us that way. God demonstrated His love toward us, that while we were still a sinner (cut off, dead, rotten to the core), Christ died for us and made it possible for us to be grafted onto the living root - Himself (Romans 5:8, Romans 11:17 ). At the very moment we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we receive a new living spirit (zoe life) to replace our old dead spirit. In the twinkling of an eye - in the time it takes for us to say, "I believe," we become a spiritually new creation. However, God's process of shaping and molding us into the image of Christ, takes a lifetime. That process is how to become spiritually beautiful.

Paul tells us: "And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV). Reflecting the Lord's glory! I know of no other beauty treatment that will make a woman truly beautiful.

Let's Pray

Dear Heavenly Father, I know I became a new creation in Christ when I became a Christian. But sometimes, I just feel like the same old me. Please help me to become more conformed to the image of Christ today. Take away whatever needs to be taken away to reveal the beauty of You that is in my heart. Help me to be spiritually beautiful today and always.

In Jesus' name,

Amen.

Now It's Your Turn

How would you describe "spiritual beauty?"

Who do you know that exemplifies what "spiritual beauty" looks and acts like?

Have you ever felt this way: "If I'm a new creation, then why don't I feel like one and why don't I act like one?" If so, then perhaps you'd like to read Sharon's book, Becoming Spiritually Beautiful - Seeing Yourself as God Sees You. In this book you'll discover the secrets to spiritual beauty and to becoming a radiant Christian woman. It also comes with a Bible Study guide for those who want to spend extra time at God's spa!

"I looked for someone who might rebuild the wall of righteousness that guards the land. I searched for someone to stand in the gap in the wall so I wouldn't have to destroy the land, but I found no one." Ezekiel 22:30(NLT)

I loved her dearly. I prayed for her often, but I reasoned with myself as I kept silent. I didn't have all the facts. It wasn't my place. I didn't want her to think that I was judging her.

She was falling into sin while pushing aside the consequences for her and her loved ones. For a long time it was secret, but now it was not. Still I said nothing.

If a car sped through a red light, I would have warned her. But sin recklessly careened through her choices, and I didn't even wave a red flag. Until one day God stopped me in my prayers with today's key verse from Ezekiel 22:30: "I looked for someone who might rebuild the wall of righteousness that guards the land. I searched for someone to stand in the gap in th wall so I wouldn't have to destroy the land, but I found no one." (NLT)

Are You looking for me, God? I wondered. Is she so heavy on Your heart that You are searching for someone to stand in the gap?

My conversation with her wasn't easy. But, it was bathed in prayer. Cloaked in words of love. And truth, sweet truth between two women.

I let her know that I loved her, and so did Jesus. In fact, He loved her so much that He had placed her on my heart for months. I told her my silence was not proof of my love, but evidence of my fears. I wanted her to know she mattered more than my fear of rejection or misunderstanding.

How many times do we watch a friend, a child, a loved one walk in the opposite direction of God and say nothing? How often do we fail to pray?

When God called Ezekiel to rebuild the wall of righteousness and stand in the gap, it was not an easy job. Ezekiel was called to speak the truth to the Israelites. God didn't promise that they would listen. Or that they would change their ways. Ezekiel was to tell them that God watched them, like a Father watches an errant child. He hated their sin but longed to lead them in a new direction, one marked with intention rather than indulgence.

My friend received my words well, and now it is up to her and God. I have promised to always be truthful with her, and in doing so, encourage, love and pray with her.

Is there someone you love, someone close to you, who has fallen into the trap of sin? Is God asking you to share the truth? Is God looking for you to stand in the gap?

Dear Father, You love this person even more than I do. You have a purpose for her life. Give me the words to say. In truth. But also in love. Help me to stand in the gap today. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

When you purchase resources through Proverbs 31 Ministries, you touch eternity because your purchase supports the many areas of hope-giving ministry we provide at no cost. We wish we could, but we simply can't compete with prices offered by huge online warehouses. Therefore, we are extremely grateful for each and every purchase you make with us. Thank you!

Application Steps:If you feel God leading you to speak to a loved one:

• Pray. Ask for wisdom.

• Don't accuse, but speak the truth.

• Don't lecture, but encourage.

• Don't argue, but listen.

• Don't fail to remind them of God's love and mercy.

Reflections:"Geography has little to do with the difference you make. What matters is that you are making the best use of your life by loving the people in it. This is the difference that endures." Dr. Leslie Parrot, You Matter More Than You Think (Zondervan)

Power Verses:Isaiah 59:16, "He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him." (NLT)

Ezekiel 36:26, "I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take you your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart." (NLT)

Courageous in Theaters September 30

Four men, one calling: To serve and protect. As law enforcement officers, they are confident and focused, standing up to the worst the streets have to offer. Yet at the end of the day, they face a challenge that none of them are truly prepared to tackle: fatherhood.

When tragedy strikes home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a newfound urgency help these dads draw closer to God ... and to their children? Protecting the streets is second nature. Raising their children in a God-honoring way? That's courageous.

Today's the Day to be Courageous!

If Casting Crowns, Third Day, or another one of your favorite bands were coming to town, you'd make seeing them a priority. You'd clear your calendar and get your tickets.

COURAGEOUS is coming to theaters September 30. It's understandable to think, "I'll catch it when I have time." The reality is, however, how a movie does on its opening weekend determines how long it will play in theaters.

Just as you'd do for a concert, make time to seeCOURAGEOUSon the weekend of September 30-October 2. Gather a group of friends, purchase your tickets, mark your calendar, and then start counting the days until you seeCOURAGEOUS!

Talking About Courageous

"Be an All Pro Dad: see COURAGEOUS and make a lasting difference in the lives of your children."Tony Dungy, Super Bowl-winning Coach

"COURAGEOUS is so good. I think God has something far beyond good, solid family entertainment for this film. The guys in your life will love the movie."Beth Moore, Living Proof Ministries

The Resolution™ Print

What would it look like if men across the country stepped up after seeing COURAGEOUS and said, "I Will" ... just like the characters in the film do when they make a formal resolution to be Godly fathers?

DaySpring has created a beautiful version of The Resolution print that is suitable for signing and framing. Let your family and everyone that enters your home know that as for you and your house, you will serve the Lord!

Trouble

You've probably noticed that acknowledging and investigating troubles seem to make them multiply. Consider your house, for example. The roof starts leaking. So you climb into the attic to check it out and discover several bad spots, a rotten rafter, mold, mildew-and often the repair bills mount from there.

Obviously, ignoring problems also makes them multiply. Ignoring the leak today leads to the living room ceiling sitting in your lap tomorrow. So you face a dilemma: If your troubles multiply whether you examine or ignore them, what should you do?

King Jehoshaphat found himself face-to-face with trouble. A huge army marched toward Jerusalem, and the scouting reports didn't hold out much hope. The problem on the horizon promised to be enormous by the time it reached the king. "Alarmed," we read, "Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the LORD" (2 Chronicles 20:3). He looked through the trouble. Faced with an overwhelming situation, the king immediately turned to Someone who is never overwhelmed.

As we face trouble in our own lives, our prayer can be like Jehoshaphat's: "Lord, I know you're in charge. So I choose to recognize this trouble as your problem, not just mine. I admit that I can't handle this situation, yet it needs to be resolved. What do you say, Lord?"

Notice how God responded to this prayer of faith. He answered, but he didn't promise to help Judah win the battle. Instead, he said he'd fight for his people. Could the king have anticipated this answer? There are times in our lives as well when God's good answers surprise us. But notice also that the king still had his marching orders: God told him not to be afraid (twice), not to be discouraged (twice), to march out, to take positions and to go out and face the enemy. By the time the people had completed God's instructions, the battle was over.

Again we face a dilemma. We often find ourselves a little too close to our troubles-so close that we end up wallowing in them. Or we find ourselves trying to avoid troubles-giving them the opportunity to pull a surprise attack. But God calls us to trust him, to look through our troubles and toward him.

To Take Away

How do you usually respond when faced with trouble?

What results have you seen when you've surrendered your troubles to God?

What problems are you facing right now that need the Jehoshaphat approach? Pray for God's guidance, intervention and protection in the face of these situations. And watch and listen for his answers.

Messianic Prophecies and the Integrity of the Gospels

Isn't it possible that the gospel writers fabricated details to make it appear that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic passages of the Old Testament? For example, one passage foreshadows that the Messiah's bones would remain unbroken (see Psalm 34:20), so maybe John invented the story about the Romans breaking the legs of the two thieves being crucified with Jesus and not breaking his legs (see John 19:31-36). Another prophecy talks about Judas' betrayal for 30 pieces of silver (prophesied in Zechariah 11:12-13 and fulfilled in Matthew 26:15; 27:3-7). Could it be that Matthew played fast and loose with the facts and said, yeah, Judas sold out Jesus for that same amount?

Pastor Louis Lapides has spent 30 years studying prophecies found within Scripture. He quickly settles these objections: "In God's wisdom, he created checks and balances both inside and outside the Christian community. When the Gospels were being circulated, there were people living who had been around when all these things happened. Someone would have said to Matthew, 'You know it didn't happen that way. We're trying to communicate a life of righteousness and truth, so don't taint it with a lie.'"

Why would Matthew have fabricated fulfilled prophecies and then have been willing to be put to death for following someone who he secretly knew was really not the Messiah? That wouldn't make any sense. What's more, the Jewish community would have jumped on any opportunity to discredit the Gospels by pointing out falsehoods. "They would have said, 'I was there, and Jesus' bones were broken by the Romans during the crucifixion,'" Lapides says. "And even though the Jewish Talmud refers to Jesus in derogatory ways, it never once makes the claim that the fulfillment of prophecies was falsified. Not one time."

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..